


What Do They Fear?

by 1stly_fannish_writing_dispensary



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Other, This Has Been Cooking For a While
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-06-06 17:11:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6762742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1stly_fannish_writing_dispensary/pseuds/1stly_fannish_writing_dispensary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is something the Doctor experienced all alone, traveling along his merry way, doing his best not to attract adventures because he promised the TARDIS he wouldn't. He met a Weeping Angel, and he met a little girl. No, it's not Amy Pond. *half the users leave* *the others stay just to be polite* And surprisingly, what he learned (I think) changed him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Battle of the Wills

**Author's Note:**

> The Weeping Angels are what really frightened me, just as big, scary monsters that lacked pity and thrived on snacking on the empty lifespans of the universe. The Daleks and the Cybermen were both scary, sure, as concepts. But Daleks, visually, are little salt-shakers with plungers attached to them, and the Cybermen are more sad to me than the Daleks are. But the whole idea of a predator here and then
> 
> there
> 
> that... freaks me out.

"Yes, I know you told me not to, but that's never been a good way to get me to leave something alone is it, and I said I was sorry! No need to be so temperamental, and I'll fix it! I always do, oh don't--"

His prized fez collection: ejected into another galaxy. If he had a spare TARDIS he could pop right back here and retrieve them, possibly, but as it was, he only had the weird one. Most days that was what he preferred but they were currently having a domestic. And if he thought about it he would have agreed, yes, it was his fault, and yes, she did have a right to be mad. But he was the Doctor and he did his best never to learn, because he already knew too much, and there mayn't be room for anything new. And define 'new': he'd prove you wrong in a second. Which was what he was trying to accomplish with the TARDIS; he wasn't making a lot of headway with it, because she was the only thing that was as old as he was AND she hadn't tried to kill him, AND she knew he felt bad but it was the matter of getting him to admit it that was making her stage a tantrum. Of course she had his collection safe.

Ah. A black hole. Very swirly and destructive. She angled toward it. 

"Oh, act your age!"

She answered by making all the levers, switches, buttons, and readouts blink and wave and generally misbehave. Basically her version of flipping him off. That was one of her favorite gestures. Concise. In vain, he tried to hold down levers, press buttons, put the switches back on the proper settings. He had the little hammer out, too, adorable boy, smashing away at the controls. Beating her into submission? Truly an idiot, this one. Or, she amended, just set in his ways.  
"FINE! I should not have cheated at checkers! But to be-- absolutely fair-- he did have eight arms. And he was cheating first. Cheating saved me one time, and this whole other human race, as you remember."

Full of himself, sometimes, wasn't he? Sometimes. All the time. That was better, yes. More truthful. 

"And he blasted you around the edges but we're going to a place where someone can repair it, lots of reparation, lots of bandaging things. Yes? You'll feel all better, I'll behave, we won't die? THERE IS A BLACK HOLE RIGHT THERE ARE YOU REALLY GOING TO TAKE IT THIS FAR YOU LOUSY, HORMONAL SPACECRAFT--"

Lousy hormonal spacecraft. Said the thousands-year-old toddler. She turned on her GPS, because yes, she had one (hello did the name TARDIS mean anything to anyone), and they veered away from the black hole as the Doctor was just getting in the swing of his righteous anger. She set them down in front of a garage as he was finishing. "AND YOU BETTER BELIEVE I'LL BREAK WHAT I HAVE TO IF IT KEEPS US BOTH--" The door popped open. Soggy green hills rolled away into misty grayness and drizzle that hung over a group of buildings that seemed like they were trying to keep the street, which boasted a whole two lanes, from getting wet. "Two lanes," the Doctor said. "Spiffy. And repair shop. How convenient, eh, good... good girl." He shut the door harder than he needed to on his way out. 

The shop had a neon sign that flickered, Open (maybe not open, anxious flicker), Open (still not sure but we'll make up our minds), OPEN. The Doctor adjusted his coat, ran a hand through his hair, cleared his throat. The door opened and a pair of vicious claws yanked him inside before he could make a grab for his sonic screwdriver. Behind him, the TARDIS locked herself up and waited in the drizzle. 

"I knew you'd come. Make a deal with me."

He looked down into the face of a young girl with tan skin, black hair in braids, and recognition in her eyes. And he said he'd behave.


	2. The Girl And Her Chalk Drawings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor meets someone who seems to know everything already

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haven't been on in a while. But right now I'm experiencing a bit of emotional turmoil which is rapidly being absorbed and transmitted through my fingertips onto this website, where it will become more bad fanfic. I already ate my problems and impulse bought; what harm could this do?
> 
> Have fun with this. Thanks for holding my baggage.

"You want to talk to my da." The girl was... well, a girl. Human. She looked young. Probably was. He couldn't tell; that got hard to do after a while. Anyway, she seemed like she might be young but there were so many people who looked young and weren't. And that wasn't important, he reminded himself, since he had an impatient lady outside in need of a fix. Speaking of that, he really should've hid her. Had he hidden her, or had she gotten to that herself? The latter, he was guessing. He adjusted his bowtie, his version of a sigh, a way to get a grasp of the situation and its horrible side effect known as reality. He should have a card saying that he was too old for reality, maybe that he'd exceeded the limit of his reality quota. Somewhere in time there was a civilization wise enough to distribute these cards and wave goodbye to beings who preferred to entomb their minds in their imaginations. Entomb. Dismal word. He was in a mood, had to snap out of it, had to work... Well. Girl. Small. She was human, at least, and she was speaking.

"Someone like you gets into trouble because you make something else mad. Is that what happened to your ship?" The two of them stood in the kitchen, faded and dusty but reasonably neat, with worn lino and a rack for dishes to dry in. He liked how humans could make things so homey. He liked that they thought to make things homey. Points to them, always, these silly creatures. "You're young, yes? Sorry. Got to get it out of the way, my brain won't let go of it." 

"Yes. I'm nine."

"How'd you know about my ship?"

"It's prob'ly a ship. It dropped down out of nowhere. My da's coming. He can fix anything. He won't even let you pay him." She put a mug of tea and an apple down in front of him and walked out of the room. "Where are you going?" he called after her. 

"I want to draw. I'm coming back."

He sipped the tea and admitted he liked it, took a bite of the apple, decided he didn't like that quite as much, but he ate some more to be polite. She was a confirmed young human, and in a lot of cases their feelings could get hurt easily, causing damage more permanent than in older humans. Sometimes children grew up to be very bitter adults; a lot of the time, actually, if he took stock of the human race as a whole. The clock ticked from its place on the wall, by a bookshelf well-stocked with secondhand finds, and the faucet dripped, drop, drop, drop, hitting just next to the drain. 

"Hullo." A man in workman's clothes stained with grease stood in the doorway, sizing him up. "What you doin' in my kitchen?"

"Your daughter made me tea. She's very good at it."

"I know. She got so good when she found out I couldn't make it to save my life."

"Well, never really been in a situation that requires that as the deciding factor... but there's always something. I'm the Doctor," he said. 

"I'm Stan. Do you need me to fix your car, or did you just get lured in here by good tea?"

"Both, but not all the way on the first one." The Doctor tossed back the last gulp of tea, set the mug down, and picked up the apple, taking another bite.

"I hate those. My daughter keeps trying to make me eat healthier. I turn into a pig if she's not around. And actually, where is she?"

She came back in with a stack of papers and colored chalk dust on her fingers. "Hey, da. Customer. Made him tea."

"Thanks. Make me some?"

"Yeah." She put the drawings on the table and leaned over the sink to turn on the faucet and wash her hands, squirting soap into her palms, rubbing it around, looking outside. "He doesn't have a car."

"I fix bikes, too."

"Not a bike," she said. "Take him outside," she said, this to the Doctor. "And those are for you."

"All of them?" her father said, glancing down at the pile of color-stained papers. "You worked hard on them. Sure?"

"Yeah."

"Thank you," the Doctor said and slid them closer. "These are..." He recognized the first picture; that was the point, he knew. Gallifrey, destroyed by war, glowed up in oranges and yellows and reds, sharp angles, weird shadows leaning around buildings, black smoke rising up to hide the stars. He could almost hear running and screaming, shots being fired, attempts to escape ending in burning ships that fell from the sky. Spreading the pictures out, he saw that they ran in a sequence, depicting a story. A memory. A confession. Among the Gallifreyans, the Daleks, the Cybermen, and all the others, there were shadows that stood still in smudges of gray, part of the smoke. They covered their eyes although they stood close together, only a few apart, reaching out to fleeing inhabitants. The dark hues of the scene showed the haziness of this, its age. 

"You got some on the table again," Stan said. He held a green mug with steam coming out of it. He brushed chalk dust off the table with a washcloth. 

The rain splattered on the roof and ran down the windowpanes, talking through the glass to the clock that answered back in ticks, ticks, ticks.

Somewhere outside there was an Angel weeping.


	3. The Girl's Name, and The Angel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girl takes the Doctor to see the Angel. Stan gets to work on the TARDIS.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doing better than I was last entry. Still a little numb inside but I'm absorbing it and transmitting it here, more fanfic, maybe not bad.

"My name's Nicole," the girl said. "My mum picked it out."

"Where's she?"

"At work," Stan said. "What d'you need me to fix?"

The Doctor led them to the TARDIS. He walked behind the girl, closer to Stan, since Stan didn't seem to know anything except that he had a customer. He had folded the drawings up and they were now tucked inside his coat pocket. The TARDIS was hidden, as the Doctor had rightly guessed. "This is Stan. That's Nicole. Stan's here to fix you," he said to the emptiness. "He's a friend." 

The TARDIS appeared by a tree. Stan walked up to it and put his hand on the side. "Well she's gotten banged up, hasn't she? Do you talk to her?" He cleared his throat. "Hullo...miss. Oh, sorry," he said, and took away his hand. "I'm not trying to take advantage, or...well, what needs fixing?"

"Your father works on space ships," the Doctor said to Nicole, who stood in rain boots but let the raindrops hit the shoulders of her sweater.

"No," she said. "But my mother's got a government job. She let him sneak around."

"Does she work for UNIT?"

"If that's the one that pretends there're no aliens then yes. Can we go see her?" Nicole pointed to the TARDIS. "She looks pretty. Better than in the pictures."

"Don't swell her head," the Doctor grumbled, following Nicole to the now-open door of the TARDIS, where Stan was leaning in and yelling about things that were bigger on the inside. The TARDIS loved the attention; she was pretty vain, like the Doctor, who felt jealous because he wasn't the one getting compliments or gasps of surprise, things he rather liked, since they meant people or otherworldly beings were happy to see him. It meant they didn't want to kill him or go to war with him. He thought of the pictures in his pocket and his eyes moved to Nicole, who stood behind her father, looking at the TARDIS the way she would look at the clock on the wall of the kitchen they'd all just walked out of. Stan ran out, held out his arms. 

"I didn't think I would ever get to see it anywhere else but the news!" he said to the Doctor, joyful. He threw his arms around the Doctor's neck and squeezed him, laughing. Nicole watched him with kindness in her eyes, something she should've been too young to be able to do. The Doctor saw this...but he also knew that Stan was hugging him, which meant the focus was on him now, and so he made a face at the TARDIS. She let out a grumpy sound. 

"What'd she get blasted by? Were you running away from a battle? Did you rescue someone? Something? Something from outer space?" Stan ran around the outside of the TARDIS and paused to run his hands down the side of the blast marks, edged in black soot. 

"I cheated at checkers on another planet," the Doctor said. 

Stan looked up at him, confused. "You're serious."

"He had EIGHT arms, EIGHT, what else was I supposed to do? She got blasted while we were making our escape. Can you fix her?"

"I've got a few things I can try. Will you let me?" Now Stan spoke to the TARDIS, respect in his voice. "I don't know if it will hurt and I don't want to lie to you."

"She appreciates truth," Nicole said.

The Doctor gazed down at her. She met his eyes, a brown-green hazel mix. "Do you want to know why I was making an important alien angry, Nicole? I've heard rumors around the galaxies that the Angels are moving away and converging in one spot. I know you know what the Angels are, Lonely Assassins, one of the most dangerous species in the universe, yes. You've met one. And you're still here. Why?"

"It likes me."

"That's not possible."

"No, not to you," she said. "It's new. That's why I need your help."

"New," the Doctor scoffed, turning away, heading toward the TARDIS where Stan knelt in the mud to examine the gashes, nodding to himself as he formed a mental plan of repair. "I've seen all there is. I've seen the Angels, and I know it's only pretending to like you, because it wants something from you. It wants me here for a reason, maybe it wants to zap me into another century, because that's what they do, Nicole, they take time from other lifespans and they feed on it, all those moments other people and beings should have had. They're parasites, and they are not your friends. So where are you hiding the Angel?"

"I'm not. Do you want me to take you to it? He has to stay here to work on your ship."

Nicole gestured to her father. During the Time Wars, the Doctor had fought beside and planned strategies with high-ranking generals, leaders of neighboring galaxies (the ones that had survived), and extraterrestrial species that were the royalty of their kind. The same posture and countenance he'd seen in their faces, wherever their faces were, whatever they considered faces to be -- it wasn't always in the traditional spot; some actually had mobile faces that drifted more when they were bored, something that allowed for more candor when speaking to them, and you could better tell when they were lying because the faces twitched no matter how hard their owners tried to steady them -- he saw the past in this human girl's face. Nicole. 

"My mum was born in France but she moved to England as a little girl," Nicole said. They were far from Stan and the TARDIS now, moving into the hills, the wet grass and moss and dirt squishing underfoot with small squelching sounds. Nicole wiped some gathered rain drops off her forehead and wiped her hand on her jacket. She squinted through the drizzle, then pointed to a pile of pebbles that nobody would notice unless they were looking. "We go down through here and that's where it'll be. That's where it's staying," Nicole said, "at least right now. Sometimes it moves around. Gets restless. But it always waits for me because it promised to." Nicole took him down a path worn by feet from the recent past, not the gradual process of time. The walk and the path both ended when they came to a spot where the hills were higher, and scrub grew around the hideaway and acted as a fence. In the grayness coming from the clouds overhead the Doctor almost missed the Angel. It wore the usual toga, its hair was the familiar sculpted style. What was wrong? The Doctor squinted at the creature for a second; he stepped in front of Nicole in case it attacked. Attack, it hadn't attacked, that was part of it. 

It wasn't hiding its face. Its hands were by its sides. Its eyes were shut, and its head was tipped back. Rain pooled in the dips of its face, darkening its skin. Bits of moss hung from spots on its clothes. The Angel didn't look abandoned, however, or lonely: it looked patient.

Nicole stepped around him and walked closer to the Angel, stopped so it was within her reach. She held out a hand to it, let her fingers hover close over its stony skin. "Guess what I'll do next, Doctor," she said.

"Don't!"

At the same time the Doctor yelled, Nicole blinked.

The Angel stayed. Nicole was still there. 

"They aren't coming for you," Nicole said. "You know that now. The Lonely Assassins are coming to this planet to destroy one of their own. They want to destroy it because it has betrayed them. So, Doctor, the one who helps the oppressed and stands in defense of entire races and civilization, Doctor, the Time Lord of Gallifrey!" Her voice echoed and her eyes took on an empress-like coldness, confident and weary. "Will you help a creature who has dared to deviate from its nature? Or will you reveal that you are a liar, and cruel?"

The Doctor took a bite of the apple, finished it, pocketed the core, and reached into his coat, withdrawing the sonic screwdriver. He pressed a button, and the tip of it glowed.


	4. The Angel's Proverb, Its Tales, Its Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicole has taken the Doctor to meet the Angel, and the Doctor has to make a choice: help or abandon this parasite?
> 
> The Angel tells its story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doing better than the last chapter. Got some feeling and emotion back on the inside of me. Heart doesn't feel as trampled. Hope you're all doing okay, I've been sad for a dumb reason, there are probably other people with bigger issues. Shoutout to them. I believe all of you are strong enough to face whatever you're going through.

The Angel used Nicole to speak. She touched its hand and shut her eyes.

"So much time we two have seen, Doctor," she said. The words came slowly, as though mentally picked over before being selected. 

"You speak well," the Doctor answered. "You must know the worth of words. Their power. Their detrimental qualities, if they're misused, as I'm sure every race knows. The human race must know. It plays with words so often. They're so young, this species, so many things to learn. Age doesn't matter to you, though, does it? That's what I think happens when age truly becomes just a number, and that's a stupid saying, while we're on the subject. Nicole, never use it. You get old, but aging is an accomplishment. All right? Can you hear me? Fight it, Nicole."

"I am not harming the child," Nicole said for the Angel. "She is under no thrall. She could choose to be silent, if she so desired."

"It's telling the truth, Doctor," Nicole told him. He believed her, though he very much did not want to. "Listen to its story. For me. You like to help children, don't you? And you owe me."

"For what?"

"Tea. Shelter. Repair. The apple you ate." Nicole wiped more drizzle from her face before it dripped into her eyes. "And you've made it your business to help those in need. You want to scan me, don't you? With your screwdriver. My da would like to see that, I bet." She curled her fingers through the air, "come here". The Doctor walked to where she stood and knelt in front of her, holding the screwdriver close. The reading showed a human being acting of her own volition, though with a connection to a being that was against all laws of nature, both of itself and others. An urge to kill it throbbed in the Doctor's hearts, beats of a war drum, memories of destruction and the feasting on carnage in his mind. Timeline after timeline ravaged, possibilities eliminated, the laws of space and time tampered with in the interest of survival, and a continuation of the race that did indeed survive; why was he helping this beast?

"In your mind there is conflict," Nicole said, back to speaking for the Angel. "You know my past and the urge that has driven my kind. Your instincts argue for my end, your grudges are crying out, telling you to succumb to them. This would be wise, indeed. But the others of my kind are coming, more than are already present on this planet. They will blot this entire planet out so that even the memory of this betrayal is gone."

"The entire planet, gone," the Doctor growled. "Because of you."

"It picked the wrong world," Nicole said in the Angel's defense. "It told me a proverb once. Every Lonely Assassin knows it. 'How do we know where we walk if our hands shield our eyes?' That's the first part. The next part is, 'Our bond to our kind and our connection is our guide'. This is a Lonely Assassin, an Angel, without a guide. It came to the first place it could reach. You know about running, Doctor."

"You're supposed to be telling the Angel's story, not mine."

"I haven't told your story. But I can guess parts of it. You've been on the telly more than once."

In spite of himself the Doctor blushed. "Can I help it if you all like to have those cameras around while I'm trying to save the universe? Your world?" He waved the sonic screwdriver at her. "Again? Honestly, you'd think that if something was fixed it would stay fixed for longer than you people let it." He shut the screwdriver and put it back in his pocket. "The Angel can finish its story."

"You'll help it?"

"For you," the Doctor said. "Only for you."

*************

"I escaped to this planet rather than continue the hunt with my kind," Nicole said for the Angel. "We search the entire universe for healthy timelines. Most often it's children, although we do devour the remainders of lives. Humans don't have much time, but what they do have is a delicacy to my kind. Many are on this planet, as I've said."

"Don't repeat yourself, then," the Doctor said. "And you don't just escape. Things like you are slow to make changes. You thought about it for a while before something happened to make you want to leave."

"I've told you, it was the hunt."

"Which hunt? What life were you planning to harvest?" 

"Mine," Nicole said. "You should have guessed."

"I was listening to the story," the Doctor replied. 

Nicole switched to her own part of the story. "It was waiting in back of the shop, the first one there, waiting for the rest. I'm already smart, already too weird to play with kids my own age. I get it," Nicole said. "One of those things, like my mum says. She says that a lot. Some nights I can't sleep so I read or I go walking."

The Doctor pictured Nicole out on the hills by herself, maybe with a flashlight that she had for these adventures, squishing over the dew-moistened ground and stumbling when she wasn't paying attention to the ground but was instead looking at the stars. Weird kid, the basic variety, the kind that, if she had been any older, may have fallen into the Doctor's timeline anyway. "The night I met the angel I was looking at the sky because it was clear that night. The stars seemed closer, like I could touch them, and I could hear the generators running back in town so I knew I wasn't far from home and that I wouldn't get lost. I had my phone on me and it was charged. I had my flashlight, too, even though I usually just use the app for that on my phone." Nicole took out the slim shiny device in its case with constellations drawn on it in black and silver permanent markers, each constellation labeled with the Earth name for it. "Then my phone went black. I pushed the power button, tried to reset it, like my mum showed me on the weekend she was here. That wasn't long ago." Nicole smiled and turned the phone over to look at the phone case's drawn-on stars. "She helped me find the names for these. She says names are important." 

A question came into the Doctor's mind. Nicole looked in his eyes and then spoke for the Angel. "Do you wonder what my name is? Do you wonder if Angels -- or Lonely Assassins if you want me to use that name -- have names at all?" A wind crept over the hills and wound through the Angel's stone wings. "We do. You learn each name when you look one of us in the eyes."

"Is that another proverb?" the Doctor asked. 

"I'd think it's more of a scientific fact," Nicole commented.

"She's right," the Angel said through Nicole.

"On with the story," Nicole said. "When my phone light went out I tried my flashlight, and that didn't work, but I just wanted to check. I figured I could find my way back just by following the stars and the sounds of the generators. I couldn't hear the generators, though, and the sky didn't look right. I saw a shadow that looked like a human, but then I realized it wasn't, and I realized that I was close to town and to my house, but too far to get to any safe place. So I did what my mum told me to do, and I walked toward the shadow."

"Your mum's cool," the Doctor said.

"Yeah. She'd like you."

"I think the TARDIS would like her."

Nicole smiled. "Really?" 

"Oh yes," the Doctor said. "The story's almost over, isn't it?"

"I'm glad you could tell that," Nicole said. "My legs are getting tired. I should sit down after this." She cleared her throat, swallowed, resumed the tale. "The Angel was waiting for me, and when I blinked and it was closer, I knew what it was. My mum had told me about them. I'd drawn pictures of them before ever seeing them in real life, but those were all wrong. Our new ones are better; they're honest." She said 'our', as though giving credit. "I don't know what the Angel was thinking. But it didn't move. I reached out and touched its fang because I wanted to get it over with like my mum would."

"Nothing happened."

"Yes something happened, just not what my mum told me would happen. I don't think she ever heard of anything like this." Nicole tapped the side of her head. "I heard the Angel's thoughts. I got inside its mind. It let me in. That meant it wanted contact, Doctor, and since I'm still in there that means it stills wants me to be there. What I first heard from its mind was this." She recited for the Angel. "In your eyes I see courage, and in your mind there is a wealth of time, a gluttony of it. I haven't sensed such strength since my peoples' last fight with the Time Lord." 

"It's hard to ask your enemies for help," Nicole said. "My mum told me that, too. But I think sometimes there's no choice. You need to trust them, because they may be the only thing that will help you survive. They may surprise you."

"Or they could kill you," the Doctor said.

"This one didn't."

"Others would."

"That's likely," Nicole agreed. "But not important right now, since none of them are here. And only one Angel needs our help." Suddenly her head spun and her eyes widened as she looked up at the Angel and then at the sky. "They're here. They're feeling for the Angel. Close. They're... they're near my da's shop."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of this bit, hope you liked it, don't expect me to be too regular. I will make an attempt to be, but I don't do really well with self-discipline. Stay safe, stay alive, be kind and always be empathetic towards others, no matter the situation. But don't be stupid about who you trust


	5. Meanwhile, Stan...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan gets to go full fanboy on the TARDIS. The TARDIS is obliging. A happy interlude with darker undertones of quickly impending disaster. We also find out that Stan knows about more than just cars.
> 
> A possible introduction of Nicole's mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This should be fun.

Everyone in the world has at one point had a dream or a goal of some kind, good or bad, accomplished or not. Dreams and ambitions are two different things, but if done correctly, if nurtured diligently, they can grow into what the individual has aspired to for so long. Get up, work hard, see if you get to where you want to be, figure out why not if you're not there, and maybe that'll lead to a new decision, a new path. Who knows? All these things sound very cheesily inspirational, and cheesy inspirational expressions have their place. Stan experienced a different sort of joy, however, something simpler, and filled with wonder. He got to ride the TARDIS. It was better than playing onstage with the Beatles, better than shaking hands with any of his favorite writers (although he did get a signed first edition of one of Charles Dickens's works, because he wasn't an idiot and there were still bills to pay), better than seeing a live performance of Hamilton with the original cast, even though that last one went head to head with what was happening to him now. The TARDIS wasn't just a machine, as he found out; it was filled with souvenirs from past adventures, civilizations long dead, an impressive fez collection (he tried on a few; the TARDIS found a mirror for him so he could model them appropriately, making thumping "fashion show" music with his mouth as he did so), and powered by something special, a consciousness that thought by itself, had emotions, opinions, and ways of expressing those opinions. For instance, the TARDIS thought that sometimes the Doctor didn't appreciate her as much as he should. Stan assured her that this wasn't true, but that he did know a little bit about that.

"I haven't been with my wife as long as you've been with the Doctor," Stan said, "not that you're married or anythin', just..." He lifted his shoulders. "You understand. You're old enough. Still, there are days when my wife doesn't call and there's an empty place at the dinner table, and there's no one to talk to Nicole except for me. Nicole loves me. But she lights up in a different way when her mum comes into the room. She loves the stories about 'mum's work'. One time she actually tried to draw a picture of you. Got the likeness down pretty well, for a five-year-old. Nicole's a lot smarter than I am. But!" Stan's smile was wide. "I'm all right myself. Not too bad. I just like things slow."

The TARDIS slowed for him, and the door popped open. He stood up and leaned out the doorway, and nearly fell into the abyss that met him. Darkness, impenetrable, incalculable, darkness that looked to be solely populated by solitary stars and far-off galaxies filled with undiscovered solar systems. Space was wide. It brought tears to Stan's eyes. "Natural reaction to this, I think," he said. "Bet you brought the Doctor here to save someone. Well, thanks for showing me, too. It's... really cool."

When he turned around and the TARDIS shut her door, Stan saw a box of tissues on a small table. He knew she had put them there just for him. So he took one, to show his thanks, and dabbed at his eyes. "How's your music selection?" In answer, the TARDIS made a sound that he thought meant anticipation, or excitement. The sort of sound a human would make before showing a friend (willing or unwilling) a minor interest or consuming obsession. A jukebox lit up and Stan went to look through them. He picked out a disc that didn't look man-made, with a title that was in no language he or any human had ever seen. "Does the Doctor listen to this one?" The TARDIS let the silence buzz in place of a "no". "Do you like this one? How long's it been since you heard it? Too long, right. Put it on." 

The TARDIS's favorite music filled the inside of her as she took Stan on a tour that would make any astronaut, or anyone in general, salivate. Gently she swooped through the darkness of space, landed on a couple planets she'd wanted to visit again, but couldn't because the Doctor was always busy saving people, even though he kept promising her that they would go back and stay for a good long time at both of them. Stan never found any music back on Earth to compare what he heard the TARDIS play for him. Part of it was due to the fact that many of the instruments used weren't from Earth, but the other part was where he was when he listened to it. When a special moment is shared nothing comes close to it. It stands by itself. Other moments and memories have to be found. That's how history builds up, accumulates in textbooks, but also in hearts, taking shape in photo albums or post-cards, letters that fade from white to yellow, music that ages well or not well. Stan believed that that was one of time's definitions. And never had he heard time's definition so elegantly expressed. He held up his arms and pretended to waltz when the music changed to a waltz of some sort. From a place tucked away above him, a spotlight appeared and followed him around the controls. The song ended. Stan bowed. The spotlight turned off.

An alarm began to blare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that was fun. Stay alive, stay strong, get up off your butt and try. Be diligent about trying because trying is how you get to the doing, so that "don't try, do" saying is crap. And it's an incomplete thought, maybe not even a thought at all, because whoever says it isn't really thinking. They're just echoing what they've heard so they can try to sound motivational.
> 
> Or maybe not. I don't know. I still don't like the saying though. And again, I hope that was fun.


End file.
